


Beneath the Fountain's Waters

by Asharen



Category: GreedFall (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, I Tried, I have no idea where this came from, Oral Sex, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Smut, Totally not real cousins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:55:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21937831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asharen/pseuds/Asharen
Summary: Constantin is having a bad day - though it certainly feels like a bad life - and his only comfort is his beloved cousin but even she is a complication. Or, at least, his inappropriate feelings for her are. Much comes to light when she ends up falling into their garden's fountain and Constantin is determined to show her what she means to him.
Relationships: Constantin d'Orsay & De Sardet, Constantin d'Orsay/De Sardet
Comments: 9
Kudos: 177





	Beneath the Fountain's Waters

**Author's Note:**

> Just a one-shot I wrote for some practice writing smut. This is not the same De Sardet from 'What if', though I'm not averse to getting a little bit o' Kurt luvin' in the middle of this. Writing a ménage fic is totally practice, right?
> 
> Honestly, I just love Constantin. If he'd been a romance option in-game, Kurt might have been dropped like a hot, sexy potato.

Constantin kicked back his head and closed his eyes, allowing the golden fingers of the afternoon sun to caress his face. Perhaps it would seep into him and reach all those cold, empty places inside of him where parental love should have been. Doubtful, somehow. The time for that was long gone - dead and buried with his childhood. He lounged in the open window of his room, one long leg dangling over the lip to the outside world. Swinging back and forth, back and forth, like a metronome that measured uncompromising boredom. If anyone were to walk into his room, his gild and chestnut prison, he would be the very picture of desultory nonchalance.

Let them find him unbothered by it all.

It had been another tedious session with Sir de Courcillon – some boring nonsense about the proper rates of taxation for imported goods and services from their neighbours and allies. Constantin, ever a disappointment to the mighty _Merchant_ Congregation, could barely recall the details. What did he care for any of those things? So long as his Thélèmic fruit was overflowing and juicy and his Bridge Alliance cigars and musk fragrant and intoxicating he cared not a whit.

As soon as the frivolous notion flitted through his head, Constantin snorted. What selfish vanity, what utter privilege he displayed. It was vile, really, but was that not the way he had been raised? He’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, trussed in silk and velvet as soon as he could walk, and given every possible indulgence that a young heir might want. Everything except affection or respect, of course.

Were his failings really a surprise?

Self-indulgent, lazy, and good for nothing, his father told him often enough. Impossible, vain, and silly, his mother despaired.

Had they not made him that way? Had they not been the ones to spoil him, to ask him to follow the impossible legacy of a dead half-brother? To be an endless disappointment? It certainly felt that way. If only his sibling had lived long enough that he too might have proven a disappointment. Death was an impeccable, untouchable legacy to leave behind.

Constantin rolled his eyes heavenward and knocked back another mouthful of sweet, pink wine. Lord, it was glorious. Sliding down his throat, smooth and cool like velour. Almost instantly he relaxed, sinking deeper into the window frame and deeper into himself. Were he not quite so handsome, quite so blessed and fair, he might have thought himself akin to a gargoyle. Perched high above the lush gardens below, dark and brooding.

Why should he change his ways when it would do no good? It never had before. If they were all determined to think those things of him, then he was more than happy to play the part of wastrel, knave, or philanderer.

Upon seeing Constantin’s lack of interest in the day’s lessons, Sir de Courcillon had offered him a choice. A poor decision on his mentor’s part and one he should have known better than to pursue.

_‘Stay and learn the ways of state, as your father demands, young Constantin or leave and be confined to your room. Again.”_

Constantin had sauntered out of the library with a merry tune on his lips, his accompaniment the sound of his teacher spitting feathers and curses behind him. For some reason, the disharmonious melody warmed him better than any brandy. The threat Courcillon had chosen was a poor one. Constantin’s entire life was a cage, what was a slightly smaller one to him? After all, his room had wine, smuggled to him daily by a kitchen girl he’d charmed into his bed. And the pantry. And the library.

A warm breeze, saturated with brine from the port and the flora below, ruffled his curls. With it, too, it brought the distant notes of another discordant song.

He knew the tune the moment he heard it. A popular love song, often played during the spring fete when maids danced around a pole with silken ribbons in their hands and hair. He knew, too, whom the sour notes belonged to. De Sardet, his most beloved cousin, was a girl of many talents but a nightingale she was not, nor would she ever be. A shame, really. The song was a sweet one…when it wasn’t being mercilessly slaughtered by tight vocal cords and abject tone-deafness.

De Sardet meandered one of the garden’s many gravel paths. Every so often she would stop to smell a bloom or rub a velvety petal between her fingers. She had a book under one arm and a soft smile gracing her full mouth. It was a mouth made for-

When the sunlight caught the hair dancing around her shoulders, waves of strawberry blonde, of rose gold, his breath stuck in his throat. She wore it down so rarely. Only a handful of times since she had left the freedom of childhood proper. Constantin sighed, reaching for the wine again. How unfairly lovely she was. Always and forever a temptation. The navy breeches she wore might well have been oil paint on her skin, they hugged her form so well. The collar of her silken shirt, pure and white, undulated in the barely-there breeze. He found himself craving the moments when her skin was exposed, his eyes greedy as they roved over her delicately boned décolletage.

He wiped at the sweat beading on his hairline.

The last mouthful of wine, pulled down his tight throat with stubbornness alone, wasn’t as sweet as he remembered in light of what wandered the gardens. Wiping his mouth with his wrist, he pressed his temple to the window frame hard enough to dent his skin and watched her.

Whatever God was out there was insistent on torturing him. He was sure of it. To set her so close to his side and yet keep him from having her. What a cruel joke. Perhaps this was his punishment for being such a hapless fool and a terrible son.

The riding boots, cut just below her knees, shone like oil in the sun. Perfectly kept, just like the rest of her. Their small, blunt heels crushed the gravel beneath them. Even when his eyes scrunched shut, he knew exactly where she was.

She must have been out riding. He knew exactly where she would have gone. To the meadows beyond the city, no doubt bursting with wildflowers in all shades of the rainbow at this time of year. Then on to the forest at their edge. He knew almost certainly that she smelled of sunshine and evergreen. She’d been out having fun, riding freely under the sun, as he attended his lessons. Of course, she already knew everything that de Courcillon had been trying to teach him. She was ever a marvel and a thorn in his side.

_“Why can’t you be more like your cousin?”_

Funny, whenever his father asked that question – and it was a frequent thing – he really heard _‘why couldn’t you have died instead of your brother?’._ Dead siblings aside, how could he ever be her? Perfection, sadly, even when it could not carry a tune in a bucket, was an impossible thing to emulate.

And how was it that he could hate her perfection and in the same breath be so fit to burst with pride of her?

Besides, would his beloved De Sardet not be there to guide him, to advise him, to better him when he was doing…whatever his father decided to do with him? Was that not the role she had been shaped for? Was she not his? If he ever amounted to anything, of course. His father might equally have him meet a tragic accident before Constantin could ruin everything his father had worked for.

If she wasn’t by his side, what was the point of anything?

The crystal glass shattered across the floor of his room with a piercing wail.

Even with the noise De Sardet didn’t notice him looming above her. Finished perusing the lush gardens, she settled herself on the wide lip of the large fountain that dominated the centre of the courtyard. Lord, it was a hideous thing. Tiered thrice over, it was several storeys tall and wrought in white marble and bronze. Beastly little cherubs, smiling like they knew all your secrets, and cross-eyed fish adorned the monstrosity, spitting out clean water.

Sweeping her eyes around as if she was looking for someone and finding nothing, she laid down. Bracing the book upright on her stomach with one hand, the other trailed across the clear water of the lowest pool.

With a quick glance at his door, Constantin reached for the vine-wrapped lattice that ran the length of the building next to his window. Quick and neat, he climbed down, his eyes scanning the gardens for any staff.

Why they hadn’t removed the lattice after his last escape was ever a mystery. It was like they were daring him to disobey. It wasn’t in him to back down from such a goad.

Spotting a white bonnet that could only signify a kitchen girl, he leapt from the wall. It might have been Mary, his occasional bedwarmer, but he couldn’t take the chance. His boots were silent when he landed in the grass, crouching down behind a bush. 

He stayed there, counting his thunderous heartbeats until the sound of boots on gravel disappeared.

De Sardet was humming to herself, the bubbling of the fountain trying desperately to harmonise with her. He couldn’t help but smile, his heart filling up with something that threatened to smother him if he let it.

And how he was tempted to let it.

Standing, he brushed himself off and ran his fingers through his curls. Suitably ruffled, that’s what all those other girls said as they fawned over him, as they reached out to touch the spun-gold strands. Usually, he smiled and indulged them, but he always found them lacking. None of them had her delicate fingers, her tender touch.

Shaking his head, Constantin stepped out from behind the bushes and cleared his throat.

De Sardet did not react.

Her cheeks were flushed a soft pink and her bottom lip was caught tight between her small, white teeth. How lovely she was. And how beastly he felt, to covet her thus. Constantin had a feeling that the book she held was one of those delightful, smutty numbers that de Courcillon had warned her would rot her brain and make her a very unsuitable wife.

Constantin rather thought that such… _adventurous_ reading would make he- any woman a very good wife indeed.

He stopped his approach before his shadow could cross her face. Not that she would have noticed anyway, she was so utterly absorbed. He watched her steel blue eyes, soft and glassy, gobble up the neat, black print as though her life depended on it.

A slow, wicked smile descended over Constantin’s features like a shadow.

She sighed, a sweet thing full of longing that kicked him squarely in the gut. When she rubbed her glistening fingers against her cotton-covered thigh, he thought he might combust. The smile on his face turned feral as he eyed the dark spot, watching as the fabric trailed and strained after the fingers that were brushing close to the apex of her thighs.

He didn’t know what he wanted more: for her to stop and spare him the agony or for her to continue and-

He had to do something, say something before her fingers reached the sweet flesh between her thighs and ruined him.

“Good reading, cousin?”

Time slowed to a trickle and he watched, helpless, as she rolled towards the water. She hit it with a yelp and somehow managed to remain cognizant enough to throw the damned book out of harm’s way. It landed by his boots – still on her page, even.

Constantin reached for it, watching as her head broke the surface.

“By the Enlightened’s hairy-” she spluttered, glaring at him over the marble lip. “What the hell, Constantin?”

He’d long been able to stave off his cousin’s displeasure but even so, it was hard to take her seriously with water running off the end of her precious, button nose.

Grinning like a cat with a mouse, he wiggled the book. De Sardet’s eyes went wide and her mouth fell open.

“I’d say a little dip will go aways to cooling you off, sweet cousin,” Constantin drawled, quickly scanning a few lines. They were so…a lot. It was a lot. A spike of heat settled in the base of his spine, stroking his admiration to something molten. “My, my. How positively graphic. Do you even know what fellatio is?”

Did he really want the answer to that? Yes, yes he did. More than his next breath maybe. Trying not to imagine those perfect lips wrapped around his heated flesh was…difficult. A herculean effort, really.

“Yes,” De Sardet bit out, her scowl doing nothing to hide her flaming cheeks. Gods, she was glorious. Dragging herself to her feet, she flicked some water at him. It missed.

Constantin found his smugness wiped clean. Forced to swallow his grin, lest his mouth fall open like a fool, he stared at her. His eyes hungered for her. The water skimmed off of her in a torrent, her skin wet and shining. The clothes clung to her like a second skin, to her thighs and hips, to the dip of her waist and the generous swell of her breasts.

Whatever was out there, help him now…

Her nipples were tight and straining against the fabric of her shirt. Paper crumpled under his fingers. Leather hit the gravel.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” De Sardet raised a brow, throwing her hair over one shoulder and twisting it between her hands.

Because she was the most breath-taking thing he had ever seen, perhaps? Because she was magnificent and strong, standing up to his teasing about the book with flushed cheek and straight spine. Because she was his only friend and the absolute best thing in his life?

Something in him, something that had been bending all his life, that had been threatening to break, snapped.

De Sardet huffed when he couldn’t answer her and pulled off her boots. Emptying each, she tossed them to the side. She winced when she looked at the state of the rest of her.

When Constantin finally found his voice, it was hoarse and deep. Barely his own.

“I fear we may have to fire the royal portraitist, fair cousin,” he muttered. Her shirt gaped when she leaned forward to hear him and his mouth watered. He _needed_ to know what the skin tasted like under there. He reached for his own boots and tugged them off, continuing. “All those portraits and not one of them with you looking like this…”

What a travesty. She was a sun-painted goddess; a spirit of nature, drenched and wanting; like sin and temptation incarnate.

I can resist anything but temptation, was it?

How was he supposed to suppress his inappropriate feelings for her when she looked like _that_?

“I’ll be sure to mention that the next time mother wants a new picture to hang over her mantel.”

Despite the words that had just fallen from his mouth, the idea of anyone else seeing her like this was… It made him want to throw something. Or drink. He wanted to close his eyes, to shut her out and walk away but he simply couldn’t bear to. He was done for, a sinner now in truth.

So, he stepped into the fountain with her. The cool water lapping around his calves barely dented the heat licking under his skin. Threatening to ignite with each breath of his.

“What are you doing?” she asked, scanning him from top to bottom as she wet her lips.

“You are-” he watched her tongue move and the embers in him answered, smouldering low in his abdomen, “-utterly bewitching, you know, like some delightful nymph born of the fountain’s waters.”

When his fingers brushed her waist, she shivered.

“You shouldn’t say things like that. It’s not tr-”

“Lying is a sin, sweet cousin,” Constantin murmured, watching his fingers stroke lazy circles over soaked silk. He would bet her skin was even softer. He trailed high with each outward push of his lungs until he grazed the side of her breast.

He was sure the clergy would say the same of his feelings for her. He had told himself that very thing on thousands of occasions. But surely what he felt when he looked at her, love, real love – not that facsimile his parent’s purported – could never be sinful?

What God would be so cruel as to label it so?

Her eyes fell closed, her mouth working as though she were desperately trying to find something to say.

“So, say nothing,” she was pleading with him now, her fingers getting tangled in his shirt, fingertips pushing into his skin as though she might keep him at bay.

Constantin leaned down, setting his mouth next to her ear, nose buried in her hairline, “That would only be a lie of omission.”

She did smell like evergreen, like a coniferous forest after rain, but also faintly like old parchment and books. He’d never be able to breathe enough of her in.

It was a wonder she hadn’t pushed him away yet and, frankly, that she hadn’t clocked him on the jaw. Her fine features looked just as twisted as his did in its weakest moments, just as tortured.

“Constantin-” she swallowed, breathless with something, “-we _can’t_.”

Can’t. _Can’t_. It wasn’t that she didn’t _want_ to…

Then suddenly, it struck him. He knew that look. Had seen it on plenty of girl’s faces. She trembled, struggled with _need_ of him. She wanted him just as much as he wanted her. How was such a thing-

“Ah, so you have thought about it,” the idea thrilled him and the heat in him sunk lower, his breeches tightening. He suddenly felt like a half-compressed spring - all potential. “I feared I was the only one cursed with such an…affliction.”

De Sardet winced, whispering dejectedly into his shoulder, “It’s not an affliction…but neither is it proper or possible. We are kin. Both of us will be betrothed to other people soon enough.”

The very thought of her being for another was an indignant roar in his blood. His fingers tightened on her waist. She was… _his_. He’d have to show her that, make her believe it.

With a hand to her sternum, he pushed her back, forcing her beneath and through the veil of falling water. It swept over them like it might wash away all of their supposed sin. His curls were plastered to his head, which brushed the underside of the tier above them, and his clothes were just as soaked as hers.

He only let up on her when her back was pressed tight to the stem of the fountain.

The water bubbled and rushed around them, light refracting from the surface and dancing over them both. Another world, and another place, just for them. It smelled sweet and fresh, nothing like the floral cacophony of the gardens beyond. Water trailed over her chin, sliding down her neck and below her collar. He wanted to catch it, to chase it from destination to origin with his tongue.

“Impossibility,” he murmured, sweeping over her cheek with his thumb, “is merely a matter of mindset. Perhaps everyone else is simply lacking in imagination.”

He could claim no such thing. Already he was imagining what the drenched skin beneath her clothes looked like. What it tasted like. Already, too, he knew it would be perfect.

Often, he had looked for her in his bedpartners. Shamefully, he preferred women with a similar shade of hair; a familiar small and curvaceous build; the same honeyed skin. Never were they close enough: the hair too coarse and dark; the build too slim; the skin reeking of perfume and not books. None of them could hold a candle to her light, the deep dimple in her right cheek, the strange mark that marred the left side of her narrow jaw.

How often he’d daydreamed of what it must feel like, that mark. ‘Might I touch it?’ hanging on his tongue only to be kept behind his teeth by his manners. Before he realised just what he was doing he was running the tip of his tongue over it. Rough and warm like living, breathing tree bark.

De Sardet jerked like he had stuck her with a knife, gasping and clawing at his shirt.

Sensitive then.

When he brushed a lingering kiss over it, she near sobbed.

When he pulled his head back her chest was working like she’d run up the grand staircase a dozen times even though he’d barely touched her. Eyes closed, her brow knit as though she were in pain. Tracing the inset with a finger, he pulled her closer.

She whimpered and he ground his teeth when she pressed against the hardness straining at his breeches.

“Constantin-”

The need in her voice brought him to her like a moth to a flame. He kissed her, lingering but a moment. When she didn’t stop him, he did it again. He brushed across her lips, from corner to corner. And when she finally kissed him back, a mere hesitant movement against him, he nearly howled in triumph.

He licked at the seam of her, begging to be let in so that he might taste the heat beyond. When she fell still instead, he pulled back. Slowly, like it was the hardest thing he had ever done. It might well have been.

“Someone is coming,” she said, jerking her head towards the servants’ entrance.

Was that it then? Was that small taste of heaven all he was permitted?

No, he wouldn’t allow it. The chances that they would be seen through the shifting veil of water was slim. He pressed a kiss just below her ear.

“Constantin-” she tried to reprimand him, she really did. It might have worked if her head hadn’t fallen to allow him more access to her flesh or if her voice hadn’t hitched _just so_.

When her fingers slid into his hair, he nipped at her throat.

She shuddered.

Nipping and sucking his way along her succulent skin, he reached for her shirt, tugging it free from her waistband. Her skin was soft and cold beneath. Possessive and greedy, his long fingers spanned the flat between her hipbones. Stroking, kneading.

When his palm slid high, she tensed.

“Wait,” there was fear in her voice.

That was when he heard the crunch of gravel outside their watery haven. Too, there was a sound of exasperation and he remembered their boots and the book.

They had left them out there…

They fell still and he covered her body with his. As though that might do anything if they were found. He looked down at her, her lovely eyes wide in fear but still glassy with want. There was a curse from outside and she pushed at his chest.

No, not like this.

He turned his head, only just able to make out a vaguely human shape. Who it was he couldn’t guess. He wasn’t even sure if they were man or woman.

Constantin knew that if he let her go now that would be it. They would never again have another moment like this. He couldn’t-

He crushed his mouth to hers, a depraved moan trapped in his throat as he tried to coax her to open for him. He needed to make her forget, to take her over until there was only room for him. Fingers tangling in his curls once more, she did as he bade. Gods, if she smelled like a library lost to the wilds then she tasted like home. He wanted to touch every inch of that sweet place with his tongue, to sweep through and conquer her and leave her quivering with need.

When she bit his lip, he snarled and yanked her breast band down. They were playing a dangerous game but he couldn’t bring himself to care. There was only her, only now. Everything else? Irrelevant.

He palmed her flesh like he owned her and teased her soft skin, never quite brushing across the tight tip. She fit so perfectly in his palm, a pliable weight. The noise she made when he sucked on her tongue was obscene, stuck somewhere between a needy keen and frustration.

Arching and taut, she tried to get him to touch the ache at the centre of her breast. Grinning into the kiss, he came close but flitted away.

Groaning again, she tore her mouth free, “Touch me.”

Shaking his head, he continued to tease.

Something hot and wicked flashed across her face and she reached under her shirt. Her small hand cupped her other breast, flesh spilling over the digits. He watched her hand move beneath silk, kneading and touching, could just make out the perfectly pink tip she rolled between her fingers.

Her head fell back and she moaned, hips snapping against his.

Growling like a beast, he tore the shirt over her head, pitching it over a moulded outcrop, and lifted her. Her legs came around his hips as he pressed her hard against the marble.

Tongue leading the way, his mouth closed over her nipple.

“Constantin-” she keened, her fingers pulled at his hair.

Gracious, had his name ever sounded so decadent, so _sinful_?

“Yes, like that,” he whispered heatedly against her damp skin. “ _Just like that_.”

Her low moans and breathy whimpers had him twitching in his breeches, threatening to spill everywhere. When she reached to play with the other rosy tip, he batted her hand away and did it himself. Soon she was undulating in slow waves, her core molten as it rubbed against him.

Pushing himself impossibly close, so there was no air between them, his head fell into the crook of her neck.

How she managed to slip her hand between their bodies was a riddle. When her hand rubbed across his heated flesh he sucked in a wet breath, any questions washed away in flame. He pulled back to watch her explore him over cotton. When she ghosted over the sensitive spot beneath the head, he bucked into her palm. A hoarse groan was torn from his lips, only to be swallowed by the babbling fountain.

He wouldn’t last like this. Not if she kept touching him like _that_ …

It took him a moment to work up the strength to stop rocking against her, to lower her back to the floor. She grasped at anything she could, his hair, his shoulders, the outcroppings. He had to unhook her ankles from the small of his back.

The tender kiss he placed on her pouted, swollen lips only appeased her a little.

When he reached for her again, she stopped him and set his hands by his side, “I want to touch you.”

He swallowed thickly and nodded, the motion jerky. She was a hum, a stroking buzz, beneath his skin. When she motioned for his shirt to go, he obeyed. Like he could do anything else. He was hers now, mind, body and soul. Knew it as surely as the sun would rise in the morning.

Hesitant at first, she started at his brow, trailing down his aristocratically straight nose. Her fingers were cold, puckered, and heavenly as she mapped him out. This wasn’t about heat anymore, this was something else. Something _more_. She lingered on his lips, brushing across them. When he nipped at a fingertip, she bit her own lip and hummed. From there, it curled over the rise of his bare chin to the hollow at the base of his throat.

The leisurely pace she set was tortuous, incredible and near had him crumbling.

She moved around him silently, graceful ripples following her as she traced around his shoulder and across his back. The kiss she placed between the twin bones of his shoulder blades was sweet and searing, a brand he’d gladly wear. His fingers flexed by his side and his brow twitched.

He tried to let the water lull him but it was no good, he _ached_ for her. The need to be inside her? It consumed him.

Constantin sucked in a lungful of moist air when her palm ghosted over his ribs, coming back to the front of him. She hid her face from him, waves of gold all he was allowed of her. The muscles under his skin danced, rising as if they might meet her touch. Anticipation burned in him, throbbing. When she brushed the pale trail of hair that disappeared beneath his trousers, she finally lifted her head.

Air was suddenly very hard to find.

Her lids were heavy, eyes darkened by something he’d never seen on her countenance before. Want. Desire. None of the others had looked at him like that, not really. They saw a prince and an heir. A commodity or a conquest. But not De Sardet, she wanted _him_.

When she smiled at him, he nearly cried. She was without hesitance. Radiant.

_His._

He fell to his knees before her, his head resting on her navel. She ran her fingers through his hair, over his scalp. She jumped when his mouth quested across the crest of her hip. His teeth were gentle as they scraped over the delicate swell of bone.

She followed behind the ties of her trousers, swaying towards him when he tugged on them. He pulled the fabric, cursing when it pooled around her knees. She laughed at his frustration, the sound sweet and bell-like. Wasn’t she just a silvery little nymph?

Her small clothes came much easier.

He had no words for her, no poetry that could do her justice. Alabaster, flushed with life and shivering with want. Exposed and heartbreakingly gorgeous. Gold hair dark and heavy with water flirted with her rosy nipples. Still, they begged for his mouth. The flare of her hip looked like it would mould perfectly to the hollow of his palm.

Made for him. Moulded for him.

Her gentle laughter turned to sharp anticipation when he drew one of her thighs over his shoulder. He pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her knee, peeking up at her through his lashes. De Sardet _quivered_. One of her hands slid through his hair, gripping the back of his head as the other clenched around the marble.

Slowly, with a reverence he could rarely claim, he trailed kisses over the dancing muscles of her thigh till her fingers were clenching at him, urging him to where she ached. The scent of her arousal made his throat twinge, the sight of her open and glistening for him enough to make his head swim.

When he touched her swollen lips with a finger, needing to know just how much she wanted him, she cried out. The hand clutching the marble flew to her mouth and she bit down on the heel of her palm as he explored her delicate, drenched folds.

He ducked his head, he had to know-

He moaned deep in his chest when she hit his tongue.

She tasted like…he could barely describe it. Heaven, perhaps? What did they often call the food of the Gods? Ambrosia? Yes, that was it. She tasted like ambrosia, like ascension into something better.

She bucked when he sucked on the little pearl at the top of her sex and he slid his hands around her hip, pinning her in place as he devoured her. Her muscles coiled as he worked her higher, pushing her harder, nudging her closer to the precipice with every swipe of his merciless tongue. When he slid a finger into her, her slick walls fluttered around him. Even sopping, she was tight as all hell. When he dared to add a second, she near ripped his hair out.

He didn’t care, she could tear it all out so long as he could grant her release, if he could taste it on his tongue.

She came apart with a muffled moan that nearly had him joining her. Her walls clamped down on his fingers as he rode the waves with her; trying to push him out, trying to pull him closer, deeper into her. He worked her until she pulled his head away from her sensitised flesh, prolonging it for as long as he could.

The tension rushed out of her and she slumped against the fountain, chest heaving and lips swollen from holding back her cries. He suspected that he was the only thing holding her up. The thought filled him with pride, dark and utter male pride.

“That was-” her words distilled into a whimper.

Yes, it was.

She dragged him up her trembling body with grappling fingers, pushing into his mouth with her tongue – still desperate and hot for him. She moaned when she tasted herself and reached for his trousers. He helped her, all but tearing the buttons asunder. He forgot all about getting them off, leaving them slung about his thighs, when her fingers closed around his length.

The strangled noise he made had her grinning into their kiss. Wanton, impish creature. She stroked him lazily from root to tip like she had done this to him a million times. Like she knew just how he liked it. Until he was threatening to come apart at the seams. When her palm swirled around the blunt head, he hissed.

“Enough,” he choked out, reaching for her thighs again and pinning her against the marble once more. “Tell me to stop if it gets too much, okay?”

She said nothing but reached to take him in hand again, guiding him between her folds.

“Promise me, cousin,” the words were hoarse to begin with but became a snarl when she rubbed the head of him along her wetness. 

“Promise,” she whispered against his lips when she finally realised that he wouldn’t enter her until she agreed.

With a rush of air, he pushed into her. Slowly. Inch by trembling inch.

Gods, she was all silken heat, gripping him tightly, pulsing and fluttering from her orgasm still. He watched her face intently for any signs of discomfort, ceasing his press into her body when she so much as twitched or tensed. Slow and gentle, he coaxed her open – till she was blooming and soaked around him. When he was finally fully seated in her they were both trembling, covered in a fine dew of sweat.

Her mouth fell open in a sigh that had nothing to do with sex and she kissed him sweetly, chastely.

Never again would he need anything but her love for him.

He rolled his hips shallowly, face in her neck. De Sardet’s breath was hot in his hair, her fingers digging into his shoulder blades. She was mewling, rolling with him soon enough. A chorus of ‘please’, ‘Constantin’ and ‘move’ fell from her lips in a garbled torrent.

He did as she bade, pulling almost fully out before thrusting back in.

Head snapping back, she moaned for him, high and pleading.

Heat flared in the skin below her nails, little crescents that would serve as his reminder that this wasn’t a dream. As if dreams could have done the sweet heat, the silken grip of her any justice.

She took him, all of him. Over and over, until they were clinging and writhing together, letting the waves of pleasure take them. Drown them. The end was coming for him quickly.

“Touch yourself,” he commanded, his voice little more than rust.

He watched the slide of her little fingers over her dewy skin, watched them sink into the shadows between their joined hips. Her knuckles brushed him whenever he bottomed out in her grasping sheathe, with each frantic circle she drew on her heated skin. Every so often she would reach lower to feel the slick glide of him into her. And every time a moan was choked out of him.

She tightened, tensed until her grip on him was bordering on painful. But he wanted it, wanted all of it. All of her.

Swivelling his hips, grinding against her trapped fingers, he demanded, “Come for me.”

De Sardet stiffened for a fraction of a second and then she _writhed_. Her body worked him, milking him for all he was worth. Pulling out of her, he worked his shaft in time to her swirling fingers.

As she came down, he spilt over her thighs.

Their breathing, ragged and sated, was loud even over the sounds of the fountain. His thighs quaked and so did hers as he set her down. They were slumped against the marble, clinging to each other in the aftermath because they couldn’t hold themselves up. They skin cooled quickly, coaxed to a shiver by the mist all around them.

It was the cold that eventually drove him from her arms.

Constantin picked up his shirt and soaked it before easing it between her thighs. She sighed and parted for him, allowing him to clean up the mess he’d left behind. Part of him wanted to leave it there, to have her marked but more of him wanted her comfortable. Sated and comfortable. He wanted her in his arms, in his bed. He wanted to watch over her whilst she slept. He wanted her spread across his satin pillows like an offering. He _wanted_.

The embers in him smouldered still with youthful endurance, flaring at such a thought.

Soft fingers on his jaw drew him up to a kiss more tender than all the others combined.

They parted, dressed, and slipped from the fountain. It was like sliding out from a dream, reluctant and hazy. Inevitable. The boots and book were gone, carried off by whoever had near interrupted them.

He didn’t care, couldn’t bring himself to. He held on to her fingers, followed her lead as she pulled him back to the palace.

Constantin would have followed her anywhere.


End file.
